The song ended, although it was irrelevant since we had stopped dancing long before. I wanted to stay with Gregory as long as possible, but most of the attendees wanted to spend time with the king, and many times they preferred to talk to him with no one else present, even if the other person was the queen. I left Gregory to his affairs and soon I had subjects also demanding my attention. While I was besieged with praises, questions, and all kinds of comments, my attention focused on Thomas, the guard in charge of guarding the castle entrance, who ran into the room and turned from one side to the other looking anxious. No one else seemed to notice Thomas, which was not unusual as nobles normally ignored guards. All of a sudden, Thomas found what he was looking for, he walked over to Tucker and informed him of something that was impossible for me to hear because of the people talking around me. Tucker's expression darkened, he immediately took Rudyard's arm and whispered s

The next day, Gregory woke me up at dawn. “Come on, hurry and try not to make a sound,” he whispered. I reluctantly got up from the bed and followed him outside. My husband took me to the lake. Everything was quiet, we were the only ones awake this early in the morning.  “What are we doing here?” I inquired. Instead of replying, Gregory started to take off all of his clothes, and then he jumped into the water. “Come on, join me,” he said. “Have you lost your mind? What if someone sees us swimming… without clothes on?” I ask

Tucker was not pleased to hear that we intended to have a private audience with Prince Dominic, but he had no choice but to respect the king's will. Gregory did not care much about Tucker’s feelings, he was too intrigued to know what the foreign prince had to say. I was anxious too and something inside me told me that I was not going to like the prince’s motives for coming here. We meet Dominic at the Throne Hall first thing in the morning, we could not wait to hear what he had to say. “My dear friends, I am very sorry for my mysterious behavior, there are too many things that I must say to you, but yesterday it was impossible for me to do so with so many ears around us," the prince apologized as soon as we sat down. “I must confess that your presence

My aunt left the day after she gave me the poison. For the next few nights, it was impossible for me to sleep, I hid the bottle under my mattress, convinced that I would never use it against Gregory or anyone else. But at the same time, I could not let anything bad happen to my brothers. I thought about telling Gregory about what my aunt had ordered me to do, but I feared that he would declare war against Lerene and, as much as I despised my uncle, I still loved that kingdom dearly and I did not want to see it suffer, besides I knew that the second Gregory attacked Lerene, my uncle would not hesitate to kill my brothers in retaliation. Also, part of me feared that everything was a trap, prince Dominic had told us that Sable Morgan was planning something to force Gregory’s army out of Dranda, what if this was it? What if my aunt had just given me the poison to anger Gregory so that he would march against Lerene so that Sable Morgan could use the opportunity to defeat

(Gregory’s POV)I felt sick, I could not believe Addison had betrayed me this way. I thought she was the woman of my dreams, I was so in love with her I never thought she would be capable of trying to murder me. Lerene was going to pay for this, I was going to destroy King Adolf and his kingdom, I would not rest until I had obliterated their existence from this earth… Addison was a different story, I had no idea what to do about that. I knew she was a traitor and she did not deserve my compassion, I should send her back to Lerene and let her perish with everyone else, but I could not. I did want to part from her… I was too weak to let her out of my life.  “What do you want to do, Your Majesty?” Tucker inquired since it had been several minutes since I last spoke. “I do not know…